Connecting with God: a special Ignatian exercise for our Secondary School students

The Secondary School chose this Ignatian Year to launch the regular practice of the Examen in our school day. The Consciousness Examen is a prayer which St. Ignatius recommended to be done every day in order to learn to seek and find God in our daily life.  The experience has been called ‘Connecting with God’ using the metaphor of the Wi-Fi and technology so that students can relate to the concepts better.

This prayer involves six simple steps. Before the prayer it is important to Connect with God by taking a good position and a few deep breaths to calm down and enter into God’s presence.

Then the first step is to Ask for God’s light (Logging in) and asking God to help us see how he was present in our life.

‘Like’ is the step where we see what we are grateful for and thanking God for them.

The longest part of the prayer is to look back over the day (Scan and Search) to identify moments where God was present by looking out for moments when we felt full of faith, hope and love. We also identify moments when we were not Christ like or where we lost connecting with God.

Chat: An important part is to speak to God as a friend speaks to a friend: to rejoice over the good moments of our lives but also to ask pardon for the moments when we veered away.

The last step is looking forward to the next day to Stay Connected. What attitude do we want to live our life with? What graces do we need from God to do so?

Students have responded well to the exercise of prayer, even because in the primary school there has also been a weekly practice of the examen. Many class teachers have commented that following the practice of the Examen, the class is more focused and attentive and students are calmer.

Connecting with God has been introduced in the first 10 minutes of class meetings which happen every three weeks. This year it is led by members of the Chaplaincy Team. Class teachers have been instrumental in helping set up the right atmosphere for this exercise to take off.

We believe that practising the Examen as a prayer more often can change the lives not only of the students and staff but also change the school culture because it becomes more reflective in nature. A card (featured above) has been designed by our Communications Officer and given to the students as a reminder of the steps necessary to carry out this prayer every day.

We encourage all families to do this simple short prayer together at the end of the day.

-Ignatian Formation Team

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